My Character to Kill

If you haven’t heard of Wells, he’s a C.I.A. operative who plays the starring role in a series of espionage thrillers that I started writing a decade ago. Random House published the first, “The Faithful Spy,” in 2006. I planned to kill Wells off at its end, a la John le Carre’s Alec Leamas. But my editor told me I couldn’t end with a fade to black, that I’d have to have a funeral. I found I couldn’t write the scene.

Since then, Wells has proven too tough to die, or maybe too mean. I’ve lost track of how many men he’s killed, but it’s well past two dozen. Last month, Putnam published his eighth adventure, “The Counterfeit Agent.” The ninth will follow in 2015. By then, I’ll have devoted almost one million words — and a major chunk of my life — to him.

Wells predates my wife, Jackie, and our daughter, Lucy. He has survived three moves and outlasted his original agent, editor and publishing house. He ushered me out of my job as a reporter at The Times to become a full-time novelist. Without him, I would never have met Jackie, who happened to be in a bar at the Hotel Commonwealth in Boston on the night when I was staying there on tour for “The Faithful Spy.”

All of which is another way of saying that John Wells has markedly enriched my life — an impressive feat for a man who doesn’t exist. Sometimes I fear our relationship is as one-sided as “The Giving Tree.” I take from him ruthlessly. Over the years, I’ve destroyed his relationships with his son, his fiancée and now his new girlfriend. I’ve forced him to beat up innocent civilians, people he’s never even met before, because they’re in his way. I’ve made him accept that his superiors are using him for their political ends, and that he can’t stop them. I’ve shot him, tortured him, broken his bones. I’ve converted him to Islam, then stretched his faith in Allah to the vanishing point. Through it all, he perseveres, though sometimes I know he’s looking at me, Job-like: Why must you hurt me so? To which I can say only: It’s this or nothing. Besides, I get you through the worst of it.
Readers ask me if I’m like him. Sadly for me, the answer is largely no. Wells and I are both tall, both cynical about power, both ride motorcycles. But he’s much tougher than I am. From my very limited experience in war zones, I know I couldn’t survive what he’s been through.

The years have worn him, though. I see it. They’ve worn me, too. For all that Wells gives, he also takes. Our history limits my freedom as a writer. I decided early on that for my novels to be as authentic as possible within the limits of genre fiction, they had to be internally consistent. What happens in one novel affects the next. Wells’s memory is as real to him as yours is to you, and the grooves of his life deepen each year.

This path is tricky for any novelist, but more so for thriller writers than others, since thriller readers expect big plots. A detective can solve murders for his entire career, but how many times can a C.I.A. operative battle terrorists, warlords and arms dealers before losing any credibility? Worse, I purpose-built Wells for his first mission infiltrating Al Qaeda in “The Faithful Spy.” Now I constantly search for realistic ways to bring him into new adventures.

I hope I’ve kept Wells from turning into a caricature. Still, I know that writing a series excludes me from one of the great pleasures of the fiction writer, the opportunity to create an entirely fresh world with each new novel. Even my first page isn’t truly blank. But in return I get the chance to discover more about Wells and the people around him with each of his journeys.

I also get a built-in audience, along with the pleasure of hearing from readers who gobble up years of work in a matter of weeks — though they may catch continuity errors that I’ve missed along the way. (Most embarrassingly, Wells’s dog Tonka switches genders, going from female to male. Whenever sharp-eyed readers point out that mistake, I explain that Tonka quietly had sex-reassignment surgery, which health privacy laws keep me from discussing further.)

What I don’t get anymore is much critical attention. Series novelists are considered less review-worthy than their one-and-done peers. The difference represents more than just the gap between literary and commercial fiction. Even critics who treat genre authors respectfully are loath to review long-running series. Obviously, I’m biased, but I think they’re making a mistake. The series format gives authors the opportunity to develop characters and relationships while providing enough action to satisfy meat-and-potatoes readers. The Hollywood analogy is obvious. “Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos” and other great television series of the last 15 years would never have worked as movies. They needed room to breathe.

Too soon, though, all those shows ended. Hit television shows are crazily expensive to make after four or five seasons. But even if the finances can be solved, another problem looms. Actors age, and the best ones demand new challenges. Bryan Cranston didn’t want to be Walter White forever.

As a novelist, I don’t have that problem. John Wells will stick around as long as I say. Whether he ages is up to me, and it’s a very tricky issue. On the one hand, authenticity demands aging. Wells was in Afghanistan undercover with Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks. In the early novels of the series, his failure to stop them is the crucial fact in his life. I can’t forget that piece of his history. Yet … Wells was no younger than 30 before Sept. 11. He’s now in his early 40s, still young enough to take the kind of physical punishment I deal him. But I am very aware that in the not-too-distant future I’ll stretch the limits of readers’ disbelief.

Faced with a similar problem, Tom Clancy steadily promoted Jack Ryan from naval professor to president of the United States. But Wells is a field man and always will be. So I’m faced with two disagreeable alternatives. Either I ask readers to accept that my hero is beating up guys half his age. Or I unmoor him from the facts of his life and make him as ageless as James Bond, forever in his prime. Celluloid heroes never really die.

Or, I suppose, I could summon my courage and do what I didn’t have the guts to do way back when, in “The Faithful Spy”: accept that Wells has outlived his time, that readers are tired of the conflict between Islam and the West, that I need to challenge myself creatively with a fresh canvas and new stories.

But I’m not sure I can say goodbye to a man whom I know so intimately, who has defined my creative life for so long — and who will pay the mortgage for at least one more contract. Putting Wells in the ground would wake me to my own mortality as much as his. After all our years together, at least I know what he would choose. He’s not afraid to die with his boots on.

Me, I’m not so sure. In the meantime, I comfort myself that the decision can wait. “The Counterfeit Agent” is over — and on that hoariest and most effective of narrative tricks, the cliffhanger. Time for us both to saddle up.

Alex Berenson, a former reporter for The Times, is a novelist and screenwriter.

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